BrainStuff Classics: Does Playing with Toy Guns Lead to Violent Behavior?

brain Stuff, Lauren voge obam here. A question that's been troubling parents more and more in an age when mass shooting seem to occur with horrifying frequency, is should young children be allowed to play with toy versions of the weapons that are killing other kids and adults. In an article for Vogue, writer Michelle Rui's described a conversation she had with a fellow mother who asked, what are we feeding our children in the metaphorical sense when we hand

them guns to play with? After a recent school shooting in Indiana, a reader's letter to the Indianapolis Star voy a similar sentiment. He wrote, children should not have even cap pistols or toy guns to play with because it teaches the wrong lesson. And here's a quote from a Huffington's Post article by Wendy Kannar, a former teacher who explains why our family doesn't allow toy guns, she said. At least one retailer has already stopped selling some types

of toy guns. In February, when Walmart announced it would raise the purchase age for firearms at its stores to twenty one. The company also said that it would remove from its website items resembling assault style rifles, including toys. Walmart stopped selling actual modern sporting rifles, including the a

R fifteen back in. For all the anxiety and outrage it stimulates, there's relatively little scientific research on the effect that playing with toy guns has upon children, and although some studies suggest it may be linked to aggressive behavior in childhood, no clear connection has been established between childhood play with toy guns and adult attitudes toward or propensity for violence. Some psychologists who have done research on children and toy guns think that parenting is a much more

important indicator of aggressive behavior. We spoke with Charles W. Turner, a psychologist on the staff of the Organ Research Institute who has more than forty years of experience conducting treatment and prevention research on children, adolescents, and young adults with

behavior problems. Back in the mid nineteen seventies, he and colleague Diane Goldsmith published one of the earliest papers on the subject, in which they compared a group of children who played with toy guns to another group who played with toy airplanes and kids who played with other toys. All were observed for signs of antisocial behavior, such as aggression or rule breaking. Why the airplanes, Turner explains, the purpose of the airplanes was to control for the fact

that you are introducing a novel toy. Is it the novelty of the toy leading to the acting out, or whether it's something specific about the gun. Turner and Goldsmith found that the toy guns produced a reliably higher rate of anti social behavior than the average of the toy airplanes and the other toys, though the toy airplanes also

increased the rate of kids misbehaving as well. But today, Turner, who moved on from what he calls hypothetical studies to studying actual young offenders, cautions against reading too much into his early work from a practical standpoint. He says it would be hard to look at whether playing with guns as a child affected attitudes as an adult. Based on his own work as well as that of other researchers.

He suspects that playing with guns as a child is one small part of a bigger picture of what leads to adult aggressive behavior. It's a small, nearly trivial part. He puts more weight on other influences, such as how a family relates to a child and their pattern of interactions.

In a study published in the journal Early Education and Development in researchers Malcolm W. Watson and Ying Peng observed thirty six three to five year old children in free play in a daycare center and coded their behavior for the amount of reallygression, pretend aggression, ref and tumble play,

and non aggressive pretend play. They also had parents fill out a questionnaire to gather data such as whether kids played with toy guns at home mostly boys did, as well as whether they watched TV programs with aggression and the amount of physical punishment that parents used for discipline. The researchers found that toy gun play, along with parental punishment were associated with a higher level of real aggression,

though not with pretend aggression. We spoke via email with Watson, who is the George and Francis Levin Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University He said, there are so many factors that act as antecedents to real aggression that this one study could not evaluate the entire story. Various factors may interact to increase the likelihood of aggression in children and

children developing long term aggressive tendencies. Watson explains the study was designed to pit the cathartic theory of aggression, in which aggressive fantasy play might reduce act will, frustration, and aggression, with the queuing theory, in which toy guns and aggressive play would act as cues and practice for real aggression. He said, the more toy gun play that was used,

the more real aggression boys showed. In their preschool boys showed much more toy gun play than did girls, and probably because of this, there was no relation found between

toy gun play and real aggression in girls. Interestingly, we also found that the more toy gun play that was used, the less non aggressive pretend play, including pretend aggression, children showed, and not aggressive pretend play is seen as a good thing for children, he continued, So, in effect, there was no evidence for a cathartic effect, but there was evidence

for a probable queuing effect playing with toy guns. Maybe increased when some children already show more aggression, or reciprocally, real aggression may be cued and increased when children play more with toy guns. It just didn't seem that anything good came from playing with toy guns. But Watson also notes that the strongest factor that predicted real aggression in preschoolers more than toy guns or watching violent TV, was the amount and frequency of parents spanking their kids or

using other corporal punishment. Watson said, we have done subsequent studies that showed the children who were more aggressive led to parents using more corporal punishment over time, but that the use of more corporal punishment led to even more aggression in the children. Parental use of corporal punishment was part of an ongoing negative spiral. He continued, I think pretend play overall has a great influence on children's development and thinking, and so I suspect that toy gun play

may have long term consequences. But I also suspect that parental attitudes towards guns and also parents modeling of aggression will have even stronger influences. Today's episode is based on the article does playing with toy guns lead to later acts of gun violence on how stuff works dot Com written by Patrick J. Keiger. Rain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,

and it's produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.